Archives For: January 2012

In 2012 BAAPT will offer scholarships to two students pursuing master’s degree in psychology, social work, organizational development, counseling or a related field. Diane Weston, a past president and long-time member of BAAPT, was a social psychology instructor at SFSU and SJSU. Diane was diagnosed with advanced-stage cancer during her 2007-2008 term as president of the Bay Area chapter of the Association for Psychological Type. A scholarship fund was established in her name through financial contributions from BAAPT members and a matching gift from the Charles Schwab Foundation. The scholarship is comprised of the following benefits:

• 50% of the cost of a MBTI® Certification course ($900 value) in San Francisco or Mountain View in 2012 • Opportunity to co-present an Introduction to MBTI® session with a seasoned MBTI® practitioner • Free entrance to BAAPT Special Event (March 10, 2012) for the scholarship recipient and three friends “Type and the Enneagram,” presented by Pat Wyman, M.Ed., LPC, 9:30am–3:30pm ($200 value per scholarship recipient)• Free entrance to 2 BAAPT Workshops for the scholarship recipient and three friends See: baapt.org/workshops.html ($240 value per scholarship recipient)• Free BAAPT membership for the scholarship recipient (March 2012 through May 2013, a $175 value) Access to extensive lending library, program and webinar recordings

Candidates must submit the following by February 17, 2012 to scholarship@baapt.org or, mail completed forms to 481 34th Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94121.

• one-page essay on your interest in Psychological Type

• recommendation from a faculty member

• application form

The Bay Area Association for Psychological Type (BAAPT) was formed in 1984 to promote the understanding, constructive use, and valuing of human diversity through the study and application of Carl Jung’s theory of Psychological Type. Our interests include the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator®, David Keirsey's work on Temperament, and a variety of typology applications. We welcome all people who are interested in using psychological type personally or professionally. We invite you to join our lively monthly meetings held September through May. Local, national, and international professionals offer presentations to our group of delightful and articulate psychological type enthusiasts. BAAPT is a volunteer-based non-profit organization, and is a chapter of APTi, the Association for Psychological Type International.

Diane McGinty Weston (INFJ) was born in Oakland, California on March 19, 1954. She graduated from Palo Alto High School in 1972. She received her bachelor's degree from UC Santa Barbara and an M.A. in Psychology from San Francisco State University. Diane worked at SRI Menlo Park as a business researcher, then as an independent consultant, and finally as an instructor in Social Psychology at San Francisco State University and San Jose State University.

Art for Peace: An Evolving Mural Project is about collaboration, dialogue, and insight
using visual arts. The means for encouraging harmonious interaction and
effective communication is through mural projects that have no end date leaving
them in a perpetual state of evolution. This project is based on three beliefs:

1. Visual arts can be used as a communication tool.

2. Clear communication moves us closer to peaceful interactions.

3. There is a reciprocal relationship between what we see and what we think and
feel.

These mural projects for peace are about encouraging intentional thoughts
towards peace. Everyone is welcome to participate and paint or write their
ideas on what is needed to move us closer to social harmony. This project is
about creating and encouraging beauty within communities and it is about
empowering people to share what they think with others in a creative visual
format.

Saybrook students are invited to submit an abstract for consideration in an upcoming publication on peace education. The finished volume will be published by Information Age Press as part of its peace education series.

The end of the twentieth century marked the beginning of an upsurge of interest in peace education. Starting in the 1950s, as exemplified in the United States with the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE), concerned citizens at the grassroots level developed peace education strategies to inform others about the dangers of violence and the need for peace. They mobilized to stop the build up of nuclear arms, to oppose the war in Vietnam, to cease support for cruel dictatorships, to support human rights, to endorse environmental sustainability, and to promote nonviolence. These campaigns. sprung up out of the hearts and minds of ordinary people concerned about their own welfare and the future of “Mother Earth.”

These grassroots peace education efforts throughout the globe teach children and adults how to live sustainably and how to resolve conflicts nonviolently. Ordinary citizens, parents, teachers, and community organizers become spiritual agents who initiate peace education programs that have contributed to the end of the war in Vietnam, disillusionment about nuclear power and weapons, regime change in places as diverse as Tunisia, Argentina, the Philippines, and Serbia, the preservation of ecosystems, the development of human rights, truth and reconciliation commissions, and the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Some of these peace education efforts took place entirely within civic society organized by community-based organizations. Some were directed towards churches and religious organizations. Others struggled to gain access to formal education systems. As a result of these efforts there are now over 300 colleges and universities around the world that have peace studies programs; schools in El Salvador, Uganda, the Philippines, and Nepal include peace education in their curricula; and schools throughout the world have adopted a variety of peacemaking strategies that teach violence prevention techniques to children and reduce violence and hostility on campuses.

Simon Trace is the CEO of the international development charity Practical Action, which works to help poor people in the developing world use technology to transform their lives.

Human development has gone hand-in-hand with technical change. Technology (defined for these purposes as both knowledge and tools) enables people to achieve well-being with less effort and drudgery, or at lower cost and with fewer resources. Technical innovation is essential for people to be able to make more effective use of the resources available to them and to respond to social, economic and environmental changes.

For those of us lucky enough to live today in one of the so-called “developed nations,” modern technology is so woven into the fabric of our daily lives that we barely notice how dependent we are on it. But remove even just one simple strand and things start to unravel very quickly, as a simple thought experiment demonstrates.

The Tech Disparity

Try to replay the first two hours of your day after getting out of bed on a cold, dark winter’s morning in your mind. Then repeat the exercise imagining how you would have fared if you did not have an electricity or gas supply to your house, your neighborhood or your place of work. That’s how a third of humanity lives. One hundred and thirty-two years after Edison introduced the first commercially viable incandescent light bulb, 1.3 billion people are still living in darkness, with no access to electricity, and 2.7 billion still cook over open fires. Clearly we have a problem ensuring well-established technologies are made available to all who need them.

I was honored to be asked by Cheryl Fracasso and Harris Friedman to contribute to a special Leaders and Mentors issue of Neuroquantology. What a great way to highlight Creativity at Saybrook, and our new programs, I thought! The attached article is called Creativity Revisited.

As per the format, I did need to say a few things about my own curious background and path, and added some useful research findings on creativity and mental health. But I then switched to Saybrook, the development of our Creativity programs, and colorful figures such as Stan Krippner, and Steve Pritzker.

The best part of all was when I got all of ten (10) Saybrook students/alums to write about their own experience, their own work with creativity, and their own visions for the future. Clearly this (the last half) is the best part! Judith Kolva, Ph.D., Alumna who just did the wonderful memoir for Saybrook's 40th anniversary, edited this last part, and put in her own amazing story.

Denita Benyshek (who is almost done with her doctorate!) decided to write her own piece for Neuroquantology, which I hope you will see later on--along with her own original artwork.

See what you think (PDF). Oh yes, there are stunning photos of these 10 Saybrook graduate students/alums, including Judith. Are Saybrook Creativity graduate students naturally good looking? Seems so :-)

Robert Jackson-Paton has been chosen as a presenter at the upcoming White Privilege Conference, occurring March 28-31 in Albuquerque, NM. The theme of the conference is Intersectionality: Vision, Commitment, and Sustainable Partnerships.

He will facilitate a workshop entitled Settlement Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Covered Wagon.

As with White privilege, invisible benefits—to Whites—accrue to White settlers through the ongoing occupation of Indigenous territories taken through a variety of dishonest means, and the transmission of that conquest through generations to the present day. The subsequent access to resources, land, wealth, education, and so on manifests as both White and settlement privilege. Environmentalism as a settler narrative will be a focus of discussion. Detailed analysis, personal narratives, as well as various interactive exercises will be provided to initiate the decolonization of White settlers in the United States, and begin conversations toward collective and individual healing.

Additionally, Jackson-Paton will be leading an all-day institute - along with Saybrook Professor Jürgen Kremer and David Raymond - on the topic Facing Collective Shadows: Accounting for and Healing from White Settlement.

In this experientially grounded workshop participants will begin to face, account for, and heal from the collective shadows of White settlement in the United States. Individual and group healing exercises will be initiated and reflected upon through a variety of ways of knowing, including but not limited to the arts, movement, and mindfulness-based practices. Particular attention will be given to making connections between the conquest of First Nations (Indigenous Peoples) and ongoing White and settlement privilege in order to facilitate deep self-reflection, self-exploration and collective transformation. Conversations will include decolonization strategies for Whites, the intergenerational transmission of the trauma of settlement, cultural identities connecting Whiteness and settlement, creating ceremonial protocols for collective and individual healing, as well as the possibilities of reclaiming relationships with nature, people and society.

Prior to attending and presenting at the White Privilege Conference, Jackson-Paton has been selected to participate in Healing Historical Harms, February 6-7 at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, VA. This training presents tools that assist in analyzing the legacies and aftermaths of historical trauma. The approach includes comprehensive strategies and practices for addressing historical trauma.

Since its inception in 1999, the Berghof Handbook is designed to present state-of-the-art research and practice in conflict transformation to an international audience. It has three primary aims:

fostering critical discussion both among and between academics and practitioners;

bridging the gap between theory and practice in the field of conflict transformation; and

including a wide range of voices and perspectives from different regions throughout the world, as well as from multiple disciplines and faculties.

The Berghof Handbook for Conflict Transformation is a comprehensive and cumulative website resource that provides continually updated cutting-edge knowledge, experience and lessons learned for those working in the field of transforming violent ethnopolitical conflict. The website content comes from two central resources: 1) commissioned Articles by leading experts from current practice and scholarship; and 2) a Dialogue Series on key issues, in which practitioners and scholars critically engage and debate with one another in light of their varying experience. Dialogues, along with a 2004 and a 2011 version of the main body of the Handbook, are also distributed in print.

The Berghof Handbook is not attempting to summarise the consolidated knowledge of a well-established discipline. It is an effort to draw attention to established practices and concepts, as well as to thorny issues and challenges. Instead of presenting a collection of recipes or ready-made tools, our goal is to put these established practices into a broader conceptual framework in order to understand their functions, strengths and weaknesses.

The Handbook's topic structure is organised into five sections according to the various dimensions of conflict transformation. In the coming year, our special focus will be on post-conflict regeneration, reconciliation and the legacy of the past, and support for peace processes. To date, the Handbook includes:

The Center for Building a Culture of Empathy's mission is to contribute to growing a movement of worldwide compassion. This is accomplished through a variety of means. First is by community organizing, bringing people together and holding in-person and online meetings to help build the movement. Next is by collecting and organizing related Internet material. Currently, a one-year online international conference has been launched on the question of 'How Can We Build a Culture of Empathy and Compassion?' (November 1, 2011 - October 2, 2012)

The conference consists of an ongoing series of online panel discussions with empathy and compassion experts from all fields and walks of life. The panels take place using Skype group video conferencing and are recorded and uploaded to Youtube for viewing at any time.Location: Online on Skype and YouTubeDate: A one year 'rolling' conference starting November 1, 2011 and ending Oct 2, 2012Vision: We envision a global culture of empathy and compassion, in a world where people experience the joy of being connected to each other and interconnected with all life.

Mission: The 'How Can We Build a Culture of Empathy and Compassion?' conference will contribute to building a global culture of empathy and compassion by bringing interested people from various world communities together to

foster synergy, build awareness and grow momentum,

inspire, support and motivate one another

share ideas and strategies

network and develop partnerships

generate plans for empathic action.

Additionally, a sub-conference asks: How to Nurture, Foster and Teach Empathy in the Education System?

A section of the conference will be specifically about how to develop a comprehensive empathy curriculum for the education system. Educators are invited to propose panels on this topic.

This past fall, Saybrook's Jürgen Kremer and Robert Jackson-Paton developed and piloted a textbook for use at Sonoma State University (SSU), based on their work in ethnoautobiography . The book contains a glossary, practical activities, and case studies to help students understand ethnoautobiography and use it as an effective research tool.

Following the success of the pilot version, the book will be submitted for publication next summer and used in additional upcoming courses - both at SSU and the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS). The book is titled

Stories of Decolonization, Autobiography, Ethnicity: Unlearning Whiteness and Reclaiming Participatory Senses of Place and Society - An Ethnoautobiographical Workbook

Expanding on a manuscript that was published by Prof. Kremer in 2003, the book considers ethnoautobiography to be a practice of radical presence. A helpful glossary is included, describing central terms used in this book. Rather than call it a glossary, however, Kremer and Jackson-Paton prefer the term “conversation pieces” because these are “reflections intended to stimulate conversation” rather than inflexible and finalized definitions.

Table of Contents and Summary

Introduction

Conversation Pieces

Chapter 1: Who Am I?

The origins and varieties of ethnoautobiography are described, with three ethnoautobiographical stories as examples. Ethnoautobiography is the telling of a decolonizing story which takes an Indigenous sense of “ethno,” including ancestry, history, place (ecology), seasons, and so on.